coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success,
or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen. - john le carre

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

"come on if you think you're hard enough."

a few days ago, anna sent me a link to this story by someone named john hawkins -- sorry, all i can think of is a cross between the boy from treasure island and ben from carnivale, i have no other context for this man and i don't really want one if this is his taste in movies -- who wrote "10 horror movies for conservatives to watch..."

i thought it was a joke. it is not.

my favorite bit? well, apart from the bit where he plumps for the recent movie adaptation of the mist because of the great ending -- gag me; the ending sucked; they should've gone with the short story ending -- my favorite bit has to be within the first couple of paragraphs:

Here's the problem: horror films aren't family friendly. They're gory, they're violent, and they're vulgar. Even setting that aside, there really aren't very many "conservative" movies overall and there are almost no truly "conservative" horror flicks.

this is just mindblowing. horror films aren't family friendly? say it ain't so, doc, say it ain't so! (i think my actual phrase when reading the article for the first time was a little...ahem...more vehement. but i'm trying to be family friendly. ;) )

gory? only when necessary, please, and make sure the blood looks real. violent? god, i hope so! vulgar? very often, yes. life is a vulgar sort of thing, sweetie; conservativity won't protect you from that, believe it or not. sooner or later that ol' violent, gory vulgarity is just going to break right through and then where will you be? well, searching for someone like me or one of my friends who knows the three best ways to kill a zombie, that's where.

and i realise that not everyone watches sleepy hollow or predator in order to relax after a hard day's whatever-it-is-you-do. that's fine. if you don't like it, don't watch it -- god knows there are enough movies out there that you should be able to find something that will tweak your particular interest! so if you find horror films innately objectionable -- why watch them? watch something else, for goodness' sake and leave the theatre to those of us who want to be here. personally, i can't deal with horror flicks in the style of the saw or hostel series -- so y'know what? i don't watch 'em. very easily solved problem!

the article is entirely worth reading just for hilarity value; the movies he picks are mostly 'ehh.' nothing non-hollywood; nothing non-mainstream; nothing that would really make you think in any meaningful way. it avoids -- with the possible exception of quarantine which i hear is a remake of a superior spanish film called rec which is currently sitting at position 6 in my netflix queue waiting for me to fall out of love with bones and the original the fog which i hear is awesome; i've only seen the remake which is funny -- all the great things horror and genre films in general have been doing over the past few years. which is a shame.

anna also found for me this post from a blog she reads called shakesville (which often makes me want to spit blood but also has some great pictures of cats) but whoever posted the comment on the hawkins piece did more detailed commentary than me while still keeping a close eye on the sheer 'what the fuck'-ery of the original piece.

as a random follow-up to something i posted awhile back, i noticed this review of freda warrington's elfland from the fantasy & sci-fi lovin' news & reviews blog. she has a much more positive take on the book than i did, so i thought i'd link it here for the sake of completeness.

coming later in the week: thoughts on unseen academicals, jonathan maberry's bad moon rising, layer cake, and (with any luck) iron man (yeah, yeah, yeah, i know i'm practically the last person on earth to see it.)